Noonan criticized the GOP presidential front-runner for
undermining President Barack Obama when the United States was in
a particularly tough spot at the United Nations, saying Perry
shallowly tried to exploit the Palestinian statehood threat for
personal political gain.

Perry accused the Obama administration of "appeasement," a loaded
word in international diplomacy, and of being "arrogant,
misguided and dangerous."

She wrote:

This was meant not to defuse but to inflame. It does not seem to
have occurred to Mr. Perry that when you are running for
president you have to be big, you have to act as if you're a
broad fellow who understands that when the American president is
in a tight spot in the U.N., America is in a tight spot in the
U.N. You don't exploit it for political gain.

Perry competitor Rick
Santorum responded: "I've forgotten more about Israel than
Rick
Perry knows about Israel," he told Politico.
Mr. Perry "has never taken a position on any of this stuff
before, and [the media is] taking this guy seriously."

The Israeli newspaper Ha'artez likened Mr. Perry's remarks to "a
pep rally for one of Israel's right-wing politicians, and a
hard-liner at that," adding that the governor "adopted the
rhetoric of Israel's radical right lock, stock and barrel."

I'd add only that in his first foreign-policy foray, the GOP
front-runner looked like a cheap, base-playing buffoon.

As I said, Mr. Obama can't win this election, but the Republicans
can lose it by being small, by being extreme, by being—are we
going to have to start using this word again?—unnuanced.